Mines and Energy Minister Tom Alweendo has castigated naysayers against local value addition of Namibia’s critical metals, who in recent months have constantly said that Namibia’s push for local value addition diminishes its investment attractiveness.
At the recently held mining expo and conference, Alweendo said that it was disconcerting to know that there are those accusing Namibia of resource nationalism.
“They argue that our policies of insisting on value addition will reduce our investment attractiveness. To the few who hold this view, our response is that this kind of attitude shows a total lack of concern about our socioeconomic challenges. It disregards our desire to create more employment opportunities for the many young Namibian people to improve their livelihoods,” he said.
“We do recognise that achieving our vision of being a significant player in the critical minerals supply chain and to ensure that in-country value-addition takes place will be challenging. We will need to attract the right investment in our country, and we will need to create a critical minerals sector that is globally competitive. It is for this reason that over the last two years, we have stepped up our international engagements in creating awareness of Namibia as an attractive investment destination. Our efforts so far have yielded good results, and we were able to conclude various collaboration pacts. We will continue to intensify our global outreach.”
The mining industry has been and continues to be one of the most important pillars of Namibia’s economy. As a sector, the mining industry is a significant contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and continues to be the biggest source of Namibia’s export revenue.
“That is why it is important for us to ensure that we continue to provide a policy environment that can continue to attract the required investments in the sector. Given that we are dealing with minerals that are not infinite, it is equally important for us to ensure that we maximise the economic benefits to be derived from our mining sector. It is therefore our commitment to embrace our role in a soberly manner and to ensure that we continuously improve our efficiency and effectiveness at being good stewards of our mineral resources on behalf of the Namibian people,” he said.
Currently Namibia faces a heightened increase in the applications for exploration licenses. For example, as of December 2023, we had over 600 new applications that needed to be evaluated. Since January 2024 to date, government has received over 400 new applications.
“Given this high volume of applications, it is no surprise that it is taking a while for us to finalise the evaluation of all the applications in a timely manner. It is not uncommon for an application to take more than a year before it is evaluated. We have also discovered that most of the applicants that have been awarded exploration licenses do turn out not to have the requisite capabilities to carry out exploration activities as per their agreed exploration work programs.
“That suggests that our evaluation process is not rigorous enough to only accept applications that have clearly demonstrated the capability to carry out exploration. We have recently therefore taken a decision to only award exploration licenses to applicants that have met the minimum exploration work program, as determined by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, and have demonstrated the necessary financial and technical capabilities to execute their exploration work programs. This is necessary, lest we delay the discoveries of minerals and consequently deprive the Namibian people of their deserved economic benefits,” he said.
Alweendo also noted that regarding mining licenses, Namibia currently has 162 valid mining licenses, and only 68 are actively mining.
“The rest are either on care and maintenance or have never started any mining activities since their licenses were issued. Just like with exploration licenses, this trend is equally concerning, and we have become more stringent when considering mining license applications. To ensure that holders of mining licenses do comply with the terms and conditions of their licenses, we have introduced a requirement where henceforth, terms and conditions of all new mining licenses shall be captured in a mining agreement that shall be negotiated between the Ministry and the holder of the license,” Alweendo said.